Projects typically involve the activities of many, often technically diverse, business groups. Such projects may often be marked by failure to meet one or more of various project objectives, including keeping the project below the desired costs and keeping with time schedules. Several factors may contribute to the failure to meet overall project objectives, as project responsibilities may be subdivided among separate operating groups, each of which has responsibility for one or more aspects of the project.
Variation in the objectives and/or strategies of a particular group during the project may additionally affect the ability of one or more other groups to reach their objectives. The failure to communicate these and other developments between individual groups can have a ripple affect on other groups which, if discovered too late in the project, may contribute to the failure of one or more of the groups in meeting their objectives.
Similarly, while a cost overrun may result in a particular group meeting the majority of their stated objectives within an acceptable variance, the cumulative affect of these variances may result in an unexpected failure to meet overall objectives. For example, each group might meet all of its objectives except for cost, resulting in an unacceptable overrun on the entire project.
These and other problems underscore a need for improved, intelligent project management system.